Twisted Fate (17 page)

And I went up to his room. It was incredibly neat. Completely organized. It was more like a suite in a fancy hotel. He had his own bathroom connected to the room and the furniture was all really nice. He had a big old oak four-poster bed. The room was bright and on a corner with windows that overlooked the woods and also our house. His room was right across from our room. It was cool and quiet and he had shelves of interesting artifacts—things he said his parents and grandparents had brought back from traveling,
or things people bought him as payment for the movies he made. He had more stuff than anyone I’d ever met. A massive record collection—I mean an actual vinyl record collection—that took up one wall of the room, another set of shelves from ceiling to floor lined with books, and another wall of electronic equipment—film stuff I guess. And then he had a closet full of stuff—some of it still in packages. Different kinds of cameras and lights and cables and microphones.

He also had an extremely thin flat-screen TV and that I guess is what we were going to watch his movies on—or that’s what he asked me over to do anyway: watch movies.

He hooked up his camera and I sat in a big comfortable leather chair in the corner by the windows and then he set up a tripod. He stood behind it looking at me and looking down at the camera every once in a while.

“Is this okay?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Sure. I guess.”

“You’re really beautiful,” he said, and I covered my face, embarrassed.

“Okay,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Allyson Tate.”

He looked confused for just a second and then smiled.

“Where do you live?”

“Next door to you.”

“You’re the girl next door.” He smiled and looked up at me as he said it.

I could feel myself blushing. “I am,” I said.

“Where do you go to school?” He adjusted some things on the camera. Messed with the focus or the light or something.

“RHS,” I said.

“What kinds of things do you like to do?”

I shrugged. “I like baking.” It made me smile to think about. “I like riding my bike. I like going out in the boat with my dad . . . gardening.”

He was looking very intently at me. Studying me, but also smiling. Boys have looked at me, of course they have, but I don’t think any boy had ever looked at me like that. Certainly not a boy as handsome as Graham Copeland.

“Where do you work?” he asked.

“Pine Grove Inn.”

“What are your hours?”

“You know . . . after school until nine on Wednesday and Thursday and then Saturday mornings. I also just come when they need me.”

“You’re a fascinating creature, Allyson Tate,” he said, and I shook my head. Even I knew that wasn’t true. I was a capable Mainer. I loved my parents and my little town and I would probably end up buying a house like my parents had and fixing it up and going sailing with my own kids when I grew up. I knew I wasn’t fascinating, that I probably looked like some girl from an L.L.Bean catalog. But maybe being happy with all the traditional things is
what made me interesting to him. Maybe being able to find blueberry patches, to make a good “lobstah dinnah,” to winterize an old house, or to love your parents—maybe those were some rare qualities I’d overlooked in myself.

He came around from behind the camera and sat next to me. And we both looked awkwardly at the lens for a while.

“I have one more question,” he said.

I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Because I thought I knew what he was going to ask. “Okay,” I said.

“Can I kiss you?”

I took a sharp breath and then laughed. “But . . . with the . . .” I pointed at the camera.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I mean,
no
if you don’t want to. Of course, if you don’t want to, but, uh . . . well . . . I just want to kiss you on camera so I can feel like I kissed a movie star. I don’t think I’ll believe it myself if I don’t have evidence. We can record over it. I just. I . . . ah. Never mind.”

I shook my head at him and laughed, and for a minute I didn’t even remember he was filming us at all. I didn’t care.

I could smell his hair, which was clean and smelled a little like cinnamon.

“I . . . um . . . sure,” I said. “Sure. Yes.” And I could feel my heart racing and I laughed again, not even knowing that I was going to.

And then he held my face in his hands and he kissed me. And then he kissed me again. And again. And again.

I
felt so validated by the move to Maine. Things were going as planned. Graham was thriving. Simply thriving. He would have an amazing portfolio to send off to wherever he decided. And he seemed to have boundless energy. He wasn’t the shy, broken boy we arrived with. It was so gratifying for me to see him turning into a real artist. Someone who put the art before everything else. And just as I suspected that made him blossom, open up, start talking and thinking about things we were afraid he’d simply buried.

I think the best way to describe this brief period of his life is as a kind of creative atonement. It was astonishing how much he could do with the simple tools he had.

That second month in Maine was one of the best in our lives. David had cut back on his work and was around more. Helping Graham with his car. We ate dinner together every evening and screened films up in the attic room. Graham
and I looked at each other’s work and gave each other comments and critiques. The first month was bumpy, but the second seemed magical. I could see how David and I were going to be when we were old and traveling to different countries to see the amazing art of our amazing son. I imagined it many times. But now those thoughts are just a memory. The last memory of happiness we have.

I
t was a big mistake to hit the pipe before I went down to breakfast. My mom was acting all weird and I couldn’t tell if it was because she was actually acting all weird or because I was high. She looked totally freaked-out, and at first I thought maybe she knew I was high or she found my stash or something. Or maybe it was the way I was dressed. I was all in black, but I had a fishing-line necklace I made out of sea glass and broken-up circuit boards that I thought was probably the coolest thing I’d ever made in my life, and generally my mom disapproved of me smashing up my electronics stuff and turning it into jewelry. She could be pretty conservative in her tastes, and I was waiting for a comment—then I realized there was something big going on. Something bad in the news.

I said, “What’s wrong?” and she just handed me the paper—she looked like she had been crying a little. I took
it and looked at the headline:
AMBER ALERT FOR ROCKLAND BOY
, and a picture of this cute little chub in a baseball cap. I looked again and realized it was Brian Phillips—our cleaning lady’s son. He’d been over to the house plenty of times and was really sweet. I loved Brian Phillips! I even showed him how to write some code one day after school. My hands started shaking. I wished I wasn’t high. I felt sick.

“Oh my God!” I shouted. “This is terrible!”

My mother nodded and then she came over and put her arms around me. Hugged me tight I guess partly to reassure herself. “Jenny Phillips must be out of her mind with worry,” she said, still holding me.

“I can’t imagine,” I said, hugging her back. I put my head on her shoulder. The news was the biggest, most terrible buzzkill ever, and I barely felt high anymore, just really upset.

The story in the paper said that the last time Brian was seen was by his friends just before he took the turn off to the street where he lived. That was after school yesterday at about 3:10. Around 3:40 his mother started calling his friends, and then at 4:30 she called the police. Someone must have taken him between his house and the corner.

Unfortunately there were no witnesses.

My mom started crying. “We should have paid her more,” she said suddenly. “She would have been able to get him a phone if she had more money, or be there to pick him up herself if she didn’t have to work so hard. Why didn’t we
pay her more? We could afford it. Oh, poor Jenny.” Then I hugged her while she cried on my shoulder. “Poor little Brian,” she kept saying. “Poor little guy.”

I said, “It’s not your fault, Mom. It’s going to be okay. They’ll find him.” She nodded and apologized for crying and then started crying again.

I didn’t feel like eating. I just had a glass of orange juice and then headed off to school.

“Be careful, Becky,” my mom said. “Please. Just call me when you get to school today, Okay? Just this once.”

“I will, Mom,” I said. “Don’t worry, someone will find him.” I left her sitting, stunned, in front of the television. Listening for any updates about the AMBER Alert.

I got outside and could see what the news had already done. I don’t think there was one kid or even a group of kids walking without someone’s mom or dad right there with them. It was like the whole town had become tense and paranoid overnight. Brian was a really nice little kid. He was the kind of kid who just talked to everyone, super friendly and chatty and kinda never stopped talking. Lots of people knew him because of that, which I thought was a good thing. It seemed likely someone would recognize him—and I thought he’d be more likely to find a way to get help, to talk to someone.

I walked up Euclid Avenue and stopped at the corner to light a cigarette and to wait for Tate and Declan so we could walk the rest of the way to school. I figured they would have
heard the news, but I could tell even watching them walk from a distance that they hadn’t. They were laughing and bumping shoulders as they walked.

When they got close enough to see my face, Tate said, “Whoa, what’s up, Becks?”

“Brian Phillips was kidnapped,” I said.

“Who?”

“Little Brian! Jenny Phillips’s kid? Our cleaning lady’s kid. Don’t you know him? He’s a cute chubby little motormouth, talks about X-Men?”

At that they looked at each other and their eyes went wide.

“Oh my God!” Tate said, turning pale.

“We just saw him last week,” Declan said, trying to sound calm. “Talking to Graham.”

I
started getting rides home with him every day after school. Syd was usually in detention so she wasn’t there to hassle me. He’d pick me up in the Austin and we’d drive home along the harbor looking at the ocean, sometimes stop at the beach. Sometimes we’d get out and walk along and collect stones. And he always brought his camera. He’d ask me questions or film the ocean rolling in. I got used to being with him and to being on film and to the quiet times we had.

He did take drugs for his ADHD and for the stuff he had gone through. I didn’t pressure him to tell me what had happened back in Virginia. But he told me most of it and I knew those were things I should keep to myself. He’d been hurt enough without everyone in Rockland finding out what happened. I knew he had different conversations with Syd than he had with me and I didn’t care. I knew she was interested in the drugs he was taking and the problems
he’d had but I was interested in how things could be better for him. I believed in him and I believed in his art. And I liked being independent of Syd. I liked what knowing him was doing to me. How it was changing me.